Wikileaks add to suspicion M'sia involved in illegal arms sales to Iran

Corrupt Barisan Nasional - Mariam Mokhtar l WikiLeaks

Three leaked Wikileaks cables expressed the US government’s displeasure and disgust with its Malaysian counterpart over the latter’s inaction when two missing Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) jet engines disappeared.

Is the Malaysian government involved in selling arms to Iran, in contravention of a UN-sponsored arms embargo? Did Malaysia use Uruguay as a transit point? Where is the intended final destination of the missing jet engines?

In November 2007, Uruguay's President Tabare Vázquez and his delegation of 50 people, visited Malaysia. During this visit, a joint communique was issued, saying that the two countries could strengthen their cooperation in the field of peacekeeping training.

The first point to note is that our engines disappeared in late 2007.

No one is suggesting that the President Vázquez took the engines home in his presidential baggage allowance, but it is well known that Vázquez was embroiled in the ‘arms from Iran controversy’.

A few months earlier, in July 2007, Vázquez authorised his navy to pick up a “cargo” in Venezuela, three months after the U.N placed an arms embargo on Iran.

The loading of Iranian arms onto a Uruguayan Navy vessel visiting Venezuela, was in contravention of a UN-sponsored arms embargo and it provoked international comment. Internal controversy regarding this event was centred on protests to Vázquez's Government from the Uruguayan opposition National Party

Uruguayan parliamentary investigators said they blocked an attempt by their government to purchase arms from Iran, using a diversion through Venezuela to try to evade U.N. sanctions on the Tehran government.

Uruguayan defence officials dismissed the incident as the result of “confusion.”

Thus, the second coincidence is the involvement of the controversial President who visited Malaysia in 2007.

The third coincidence is that our jet engines was eventually found in Uruguay.

More importantly, from 2000 to 2008, Malaysia’s Minister of Defence was Najib Abdul Razak.

Najib is now Prime Minister but there has been a furious debate about over-spending as well as the huge military build-up during his tenure in Mindef.  Najib has been responsible for a variety of scandals whilst a Defence Minister.

So were the jet engines destined for their final unknown destination, most probably Iran, by using Uruguay as a transit point?

Was Najib embroiled in breaking the UN arms embargo of Iran?

Most people are aware that Iran’s status as a volatile Muslim nation means the country is experiencing difficulty obtaining spares because of a UN arms embargo

If Malaysia is not involved, then why did the Malaysian government only release details of the loss of the engines in late 2009, two years after the event? Our government claims it did not discover the loss until they had to overhaul the engines.

Of significance is that our government probably did not want the USA, which sold the engines to us in the first place, to know that we had broken the arms embargo.

Did the government try to bury this bad news - the disappearance of the jet engines - by overshadowing this loss with another more notable event?

Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, the defence minister, made public the loss of the jet engines on 19 December, 2009, on the same day as the first Pakatan Rakyat convention. Ahmad Zahid knew that the Pakatan event would overshadow the Ministry of Defence announcement.

If the Malaysian government refuses to be transparent with us, then Wikileaks will be our stop-gap measure for a semblance of transparency.

Three leaked Wikileaks cables expressed the US government’s displeasure and disgust with its Malaysian counterpart over the latter’s inaction when two missing Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) jet engines disappeared.

The first two cables revealed that the US Embassy in Malaysia had been frustrated by officials from the Malaysian Defence Ministry, as requests for a full report on the theft of the two jet engines were not fulfilled.

The third cable marked 'confidential' showed how the embassy officials ‘expressed incredulity’ at the Malaysian government’s position that the thefts were carried out solely by two relatively low-level individuals and that the ‘higher-ups in the military and elsewhere’ were not involved.

The American embassy had to continually push our government for a complete accounting of how the thefts occurred and the ultimate disposition of the engines, and to remind the Malaysian government of the seriousness of the issue and need for remedial actions.

Any country that purchases arms from the United States is required to provide the latter with a full report should the equipment be stolen or found missing.

The American Embassy was exasperated with the excuses given by the RMAF. Although the RMAF fully understood the requirements of the United States government on Foreign Military Sales policy in relation to this incident, it claimed it was unable to notify earlier pending completion of investigations by the Royal Malaysian Police.

The US Embassy was also annoyed that RMAF missed three opportunities to inform the US government of the missing engines.

First. When the RMAF informed the US Embassy that it had sent one F-5 engine to a Canadian company for repairs.

Second. When the RMAF sent an ‘inventory recertification listing’ of the J-85 engines to the US Air Force engine programme manager in January 2009 but did not list any discrepancies.

Third. When the RMAF and USAF conducted a routine bilateral J-85 engine review conference in May the same year. Again, no issue of missing engines was raised with the US Embassy at the conference.

In January last year, RMAF sergeant N Tharmendran and company managing director K Rajendran Prasad were charged in the Sessions Court in relation to the theft of the two missing jet engines.

Have they been set-up?

Anyway, the last we heard, our Attorney-General had to fly to Uruguay in February 2010 to release the jet engines, which had been traced to Uruguay, and to bring them back home.

Is our ambassador or military attaché, in either the Malaysian Embassy in Argentina or the honorary consulate in Montevideo in Uruguay, incompetent? Was the A-G's presence necessary?

We are deeply disturbed with Malaysia’s alleged role in the underworld of arms sales and also of civil-servants making expensive trips at taxpayers’ expense.

So where are these jet engines now? Iran, Uruguay or Sungei Besi? What is the real story behind these jet engines? Who are the main characters in this disappearing magic trick?

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